About Me

Saturday, November 25, 2017

At
this time of the year before Advent begins, the readings always focus
on the end of the world and the second coming of Christ. We do this
because it was one of the things that Jesus taught. Jesus taught that
he would come again and that when he does come it will be for a time
of judgement. All people will be judged. Each week we say in the
Creed, ‘He will come again to judge the living and the dead’.

It can be
tempting to discard what we don’t understand, especially if it
sounds a little silly. The idea of Jesus appearing in glory and
coming on the clouds to judge the world may seem hard to swallow.
However, it would be a great mistake on our part if we began to just
take the parts of Jesus’ teaching that ‘make sense’ and leave
the other ones. Perhaps a better approach is to say we accept all his
teachings, but we don’t understand many of them. ‘I don’t
understand, but I believe.’ That’s what faith is.

If the Lord is
to come to judge the living and the dead, it implies two things:
First, that there must be a heaven and a hell. Otherwise there would
be no point in judging us if it were going to make no difference.
Heaven is the total happiness that being in the presence of God will
bring. This is something that we cannot understand, because we have
no experience of it yet, but this will be the most complete happiness
we could ever know and this is what God has planned for us; that is
what He wants for us and God will make that happen unless we
consciously and deliberately reject God.

Then there is
the total loss of God for those who reject him, and this is hell, the
loss of everything that can bring happiness. Jesus has taught us that
this is real, otherwise it would make no sense that we have free
will, the power to accept or reject God.

The second
thing that the Lord’s coming implies is that we will have to make
an account of our lives to God. We will be held accountable for our
actions. I often think that when we hear about so many of these
tribunals which cost millions and show the wholesale corruption that
goes on, it can be very frustrating, because the people who get away
with the most never seem to have to pay, either because they are
powerful enough, or because of the legal system. They always seem to
get off the hook. It’s wrong and it happens every day. But if a
young person steals something from the local supermarket, you can be
sure he or she will be brought to court and they’ll pay for it with
a fine or with jail time. Yet even the rich and powerful must
remember that their power and wealth won’t be with them when they
die. They too will have to give an account of themselves to God
and nothing is hidden from God. I find this consoling, not because I
wish evil on anyone, but because at least I know that in the end
there will be justice.

Is this a
reason for us to be afraid? Of course not, unless we are deliberately
trying to fool God. If we try to live as the Lord teaches us
and make even the smallest effort, then we have nothing to fear. If
we just get on with the day to day tasks that we are presented with
and try to be honest before God, then we have nothing to worry about,
because this is what Jesus teaches us. The fact is that we are all
sinners, we all fall short of the mark and none of us ever get it
exactly right, but God isn’t put off by this. God sees the heart.
God knows when we are doing our best and trying to live as best we
can. He knows all the pressures that we are under. He knows how
difficult it is to try and survive in the world. The Lord looks at
each of our hearts and judges us by what is in our heart. So, there
is no reason for us to be afraid if we make even the smallest
effort.

It is also
important to remember that God is infinitely merciful and mercy is
something which is not deserved. God’s justice and mercy go
together. Think of all the times that we see people in the
paper convicted of some terrible crime, and we say, ‘I hope he gets
life,’ or ‘I hope they kill him…’ It’s just as well
for our sake that God is more merciful with us, than we are with each
other, or none of us would stand a chance.

Another reason
why we can never judge someone else is because we don’t know what’s
in their heart. We don’t know what has influenced another person’s
actions, or what pressures they are under. That’s why Jesus teaches
us, ‘Do not judge and you will not be judged’. Only God can
judge, and only God will judge perfectly justly. We can judge the
outward actions of a person, but we cannot judge the heart.

There is a
story of a young man who was in Napoleon’s army. He deserted
because he was tired of war and afraid, but he was caught. The
punishment for desertion was death and so he was to be executed. But
his mother happened to work in Napoleon’s house. She managed to
meet with him and she pleaded on her son’s behalf. She explained
that this man was her only son and all that she had in the world. She
asked Napoleon to show him some mercy. Napoleon replied, ‘He
doesn’t deserve mercy.’ The woman said to him, ‘If he deserved
it, it wouldn’t be mercy.’ Mercy is not deserved, but it is given
out of love and compassion. You can see this from the extraordinary
compassion that Jesus showed to the various people he met during his
life on earth. Even the ones whose lives were a total mess, he showed
such respect and love.

God is
infinitely merciful and so if we try to do what is right we have
nothing to be afraid of.

Jesus Christ
is Lord and He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

Saturday, November 18, 2017

Bishop Dewane has asked all
parishes to make a consecration of the parish and the whole diocese, to Mary. This
will be done on Christmas Eve and there is a 33-day preparation for this, which
will involve prayers each day to be said in each parish. I would like to try
and explain what this means and why we would be asked to do this.

A consecration of something, or
someone, means a dedication to something sacred. When a new church is built, it
is consecrated, or ‘dedicated’ to God as a place of worship. When I was
ordained a priest, I was consecrated to God’s service. To consecrate our parish
and our world to Our Lady is to consecrate ourselves to Jesus through Mary. But why not just consecrate
our diocese to Jesus directly? Why do we need to bring Mary into it?

God the Father chose to give his
Son Jesus to us, through Mary, because He wants us to be part of his work in
the world. God could fix everything in the world instantly, but God wants us human
beings to be involved in his creation and his work and this is a reminder to us
of how much God respects us and loves us. So, God gave us Jesus, through Mary.
Mary was his instrument to bring us Jesus. He allowed his work to depend on the
cooperation of a human being. This woman, Mary, who was just a teenager at the
time, was invited to play this extraordinary role in history. Through her ‘yes’
to God’s invitation, Jesus, the One who would free us from eternal death, came
into the world. So the most ideal way for us to come to Jesus, is also through Mary.
Who is closer to God than Mary? No one. What request of Mary would be refused
by Jesus? Nothing. She is the ideal vessel to bring us to Jesus. To consecrate
our parishes and diocese to Jesus through her, is the ideal way to give
ourselves to Jesus.

Why do we need to make this consecration
at all? Don’t we already belong to Jesus? Of course we do, but in the words of John Paul II, we are
living in a time of ‘unprecedented evil’, in a ‘culture of death.’ However, God’s
word in the Bible also tells us that ‘where sin increased, grace increased all
the more’ (Rom 5:20). This means that even where there is terrible evil, God’s
help will be there even more, which means that right now, God is offering us
more help than ever, to overcome what is happening around us.

When Our Lady appeared in Fatima,
she warned the children that the world must turn back to God to prevent further
wars and catastrophes. She said that many people had turned away from God and
that the sins of the world were greatly offending God. Those apparitions took
place during World War 1. Our Lady also said that if people turned back to God
with prayer and penance the war (WW1) would end and a second greater war could
be prevented. She said to the children:

“To prevent
this [Second
World War] I shall come to ask the consecration of Russia to my
Immaculate Heart, and Communions of reparation on the first Saturdays. If
my requests are heard, Russia will be converted and there will be peace. If
not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, fomenting wars and
persecution of the Church.”

Right now we need all the help we
can get and to rededicate ourselves to Jesus through Mary, is exactly what we
need to do in order to help us reduce and overcome the evil in the world.

We don’t know that much about the
life of Mary, but we do know that everywhere in the Bible that mentions Mary,
she was always pointing people to Jesus, bringing people to Jesus. At the wedding of Cana when the couple
ran out of wine, she asked Jesus to fix the situation. Jesus said that this
wasn’t his time to start working miracles, but he did it anyway because Mary asked him to. Anywhere that Mary has appeared in the world, and there have been
quite a few places, it has always been about her pointing us back to Jesus. So a consecration
to Mary is really about Jesus.

At the end of his life on earth,
while dying on the cross, Jesus entrusted John the Apostle to Mary. ‘Son,
behold your mother’ (John 19:26). Now St. John also represents the model disciple, in other words, this is what we are also called to be like. St. John was always the one who did the right
thing and was faithful to Jesus to the end. He was the only one of the Apostles
beside Jesus at the foot of the cross. He represents all disciples, which is
us. Jesus entrusted all of us to the care of Our Lady, because she is the
perfect instrument to bring us to Jesus. That is why she has continually
appeared in different places, pointing us to Jesus, asking us to come back to
Jesus, for our own sake.

At this time, our world has gone
crazy. Just think about this country alone: all the killings for no particular
reason. This wasn’t happening up to quite recently. Why is it happening now?
Because there is so much evil in the world and because so many people have turned away from God. We need all the help we
can get to prevent it from getting any worse. Therefore, we rededicate
ourselves, our parishes and our diocese, to Our Lady, to help refocus on Jesus,
rededicate ourselves to Jesus, in order to put things right again.

When we are in trouble, God
always shows us what we need to do. This is what God is showing us right now.

This 33-day preparation will
involve prayers during each mass starting this Tuesday. If you would like to do
this in a more in-depth way, there is also a book available for private use called 33 Days to Morning Glory.

Whether you decide to do the
indepth version of this 33-day preparation, or just join us at whatever mass
you find yourself at, take this seriously. Each day make a private prayer for yourself and your family or loved ones, so that we all may be drawn closer to Jesus, through Mary. We really need God’s help at this time and God is offering it to us through this consecration to Our Lady.

Friday, November 10, 2017

November
is a time when we pray especially for those who have died. We pray
for them because we know it’s important to pray for the dead, that
they will have their sins forgiven. When we die most people are not
holy enough that they can come straight into the presence of God’s
pure holiness, so they go through a state or ‘purification’, or
‘being made ready’ for God. This is what we call Purgatory and we
know that we can help the souls of those who are there, by praying
for them and making sacrifices for them. I often think of it this
way: when we wake up in the morning and turn on the bed-side light,
we have to shield our eyes because it is too bright. We have to
adjust. Can you imagine if we had the full light of the sun at that
moment? It would be unbearable. So a time of adjustment is needed. We
may also need to atone for sins that we have committed but have not
atoned for. How do we know this is true? Many of the saints have been
shown Purgatory and this has been explained to them. One of the most
extraordinary mystics of all time, St. Pius of Pietrelcina (better
known as Padre Pio), said that more souls came to him from Purgatory
asking for prayers, than people on earth did. And so we pray for
those who have died and not just mourn for them. When I die, I’m
sure people will mourn for me as is normal when anyone dies. I would
rather that they pray for me.

Is
it foolish for us to ever think that hell and purgatory are real? If
it were impossible for anyone to go there, then Jesus would hardly
have warned people so often to be careful as there would have been no
need. But Jesus frequently warned us to be careful and to be ready
and not just to presume that everything will be alright. We can
always have great confidence in God’s mercy and never be afraid,
but I think what Jesus is warning us of, is presumption. It would be
a mistake to presume that everything will be fine, even if we
have completely ignored God all our life. The attitude that you meet
quite often which says, ‘I’ll be alright on the day. I’ll sort
things out with God myself’, as though we were equal to God, or
could manipulate God. God will of course forgive those who repent and
are sincere. That is what Jesus continually assured us of. But it
would be foolish of us to think that we can take advantage of his
mercy. God is merciful, but God is not a fool.

But
how could hell exist at all, you say? How could a loving God send
anyone to hell? It’s a good question. God doesn’t send
anyone to hell. We choose it for ourselves by the way we live. Think
of it this way: if God is all goodness, beauty, light, love, joy and
total fulfillment in a way that we never experience on this earth.
Then hell is the opposite of this; evil, ugliness, darkness, hatred,
isolation and the terrible pain of knowing that we have lost the
chance of total fulfillment and happiness. To reject God is to reject
all that God is. By rejecting God, we choose the opposite. Our life
on earth is the time we have to make the choice for God or against
God and we do that by the way we live.

God
does not want anyone to be cut off from him. That is not what He
created us for. And God continually gives each of us every
opportunity to come back to him, all through our life, no matter how
far we may have strayed. Think of the ‘good thief’ dying on the
cross beside Jesus. When he asks Jesus to remember him, Jesus
replies, ‘Truly I tell you, this day you will be with me in
paradise’ (Luke 23:43). God will never give up on us, as long as we
are alive, but we also have to decide for God and if we don’t, we
have to face the consequences. We have free will, but our choices
also have consequences.

Look
at what it says in the Gospel reading about the bridesmaids who were
left outside. When they said ‘Lord, Lord, let us in.’ He
said, ‘I do not know you’. They had never concerned themselves
with God and so they did not know God, and so God did not know them.
‘I do not know you’.

We
need not let ourselves be preoccupied with this, as God assures of
his infinite mercy to anyone who reaches out to him, but just as the
world is full of dangers, such as drugs, violence and people with
evil intentions and we always try to warn our children what they need
to be careful of, so God is doing the same with us, warning us that
we need to be careful.

The
Lord is telling us to be wise and realise that we have to be
responsible. If you say you believe in God, then do, and live
as He asks you to live, and don’t be afraid. We all want to
reach the happiness of heaven and there’s no reason why we
shouldn’t, but we also must be wise and not take it for granted.